AdBlocker Detected!

We know, advertisements are annoying and slow down the internet. Unfortunately, this is how we pay the bills and our authors.
We would love for you to enjoy our content, we've worked hard on providing it. Please whitelist our site in your adblocker, refresh the page, and enjoy!

General Motors, Opel Chiefs To Meet With Chancellor Of Germany Angela Merkel Next Week

Sponsored Links

General Motors CEO Dan Akerson and recently-appointed Chairman of OpelKarl-Thomas Neumann will meet Chancellor Angela Merkel next week, reportedly to discuss the rejection of the automaker’s plan to maintain operations by workers at Opel’s Bochum plant in Germany. The one-hour meeting with Merkel in Berlin on Thursday comes as European car sales reach an all-time low and a slumping economy.

Coincidentally, Merkel will be seeking a third reelection to the chancellor position in September. After her first election in 2005, Merkel was then re-elected in 2009 amid involved negotiations between GM and Germany about Opel’s future, at which point The General wanted to shutter or sell the German brand. One of the most concrete suitors for Opel turned out to be Canadian parts supplier Magna, backed by Russian financial firm Sberbank. The deal ended up falling through, as GM made a last-minute decision (that was perhaps spearheaded by GM CEO Dan Akerson) to keep Opel.

In March, Bochum plant workers rejected a proposal that offered to keep the plant open, although not by producing the Zafira, but by manufacturing and warehousing parts and components through the end of 2016; the move would have still resulted in a reduction of staff at the plant — from the current 3,000 to 1,200 (both figures approximate). In exchange to agreeing to extend the plant’s operations, workers would have agreed to delay or eliminate wage increases. Now that Opel’s proposal to restructure the plant has been rejected, the facility will likely be closed by the end of 2014.

According to government spokesman Georg Streiter, the meeting between Akerson, Neumann, and Merkel coincided with a meeting of the GM board in Germany, and came at the request of the automaker. Asked by reporters whether Opel would be the subject of Thursday’s discussions, Streiter said he “could not rule it out”.

Notably, Minister of German Economy Philipp Roesler will not be in attendance, as he will be on an official trip to Turkey, said the German ministry.

Sponsored Links

6 Comments

GM and Opel have been a thorn in the side of Merkel. According to Wikileaks Merkel refused to accept calls from GM when the Magna deal was cancelled. Then Neelie Kroes of the European Commissioner for Competition slammed Germany for offering a deal to Magna that contravened EU rules. Now Merkel has to make nice to GM to try and save jobs at Bochum. This should be frosty meeting.

The plan is actualy to SHUT DOWN the plant, and to keep only a distribution center with a minimal workforce.

GM/Opel “offered” to continue the production of the Zafira until 2016, and then shut down production, while at the same time not to honor the current contract by not paying the wage increases contracted. Also the third shift was to be closed right away, making 700 workers unemployed.

When the combative workers at the Bochum Opel plant rejected those give-back demands, GM/Opel retaliated by announcing the end of the Zafira production already two years earlier, in 2014.

I believe @Observer7 is correct, although as a mere line worker in the UK Ellesmere Port plant, I may be misinformed. As I understand it, GM cannot do much without labour agreement before the current contracts end in 2014. That is when the agreement over no plant closures and no compulsory redundancies ends. They can shut the place completely. The offer from GM was to keep Zafira production going past that date to 2016 (to the end of the Zafira life-cycle) and then keep Bochum open past 2016 as a components/warehouse facility with a much reduced workforce. In return they wanted to cut the third shift NOW, wage freezes and other concessions. Bochum believed GM were bluffing and they were not actually able to shift Zafira production to another plant mid-cycle. Looks like they were wrong.

What happens now is up for debate. Will both sides return to the negotiating table? GM have said they won’t. What happens to Zafira production 2014-16? It could go to a Peugeot plant I suppose, but my guess would be Russelsheim with some, or all, of Russelsheim’s Astra production moving to Poland and the UK to make use of capacity there. Who knows?

GM/Opel planned to close the Bochum plant (as a production site, at least) anyway. And they demanded givebacks, like rescinding the wage increases agreed upon in the collective contract, and other concessions.

And they threated to retaliate by closeing the plant earlier than planned if the workers would not bow their heads and surrender to the company dictate. The earlier closure is presented as a vengeance against the workers preserving their honor instead of fallin on their knees.

BTW, the occasion for meeting with Merkel is a top GM management meeting in Rüsselsheim, a 15 member committee; I guess this is the executive committee of which the new Opel CEO, Neumann, became a member.